One of my users at work personal Hotmail account got hacked. I told her to change her password, security questions and to run her virus/malware program on her computer. If there anything else I should tell her to do.

1. Before you do anything else, change your Hotmail account password to something very safe. Not a dictionary word or name, or even a word and numbers. Use symbols such as $ and & in your password, and make it long. It may difficult to remember, but if you don't want to be hacked, you'll have to start using strong passwords.

2. Check that your autoresponse and email signature on Hotmail do not have any spam text added to them, as this would go out to your contacts automatically.

3. Check that your computer does not have spyware or viruses.

4. From now on keep passwords safe, and be extra careful when using public computers (such as those in Internet cafes). If in doubt - change passwords.

5. Alert Hotmail support to the problem. It seems to be happening all over the place, and the more they know about it, the better it is for their efforts to address it.

8 Replies

1. Before you do anything else, change your Hotmail account password to something very safe. Not a dictionary word or name, or even a word and numbers. Use symbols such as $ and & in your password, and make it long. It may difficult to remember, but if you don't want to be hacked, you'll have to start using strong passwords.

2. Check that your autoresponse and email signature on Hotmail do not have any spam text added to them, as this would go out to your contacts automatically.

3. Check that your computer does not have spyware or viruses.

4. From now on keep passwords safe, and be extra careful when using public computers (such as those in Internet cafes). If in doubt - change passwords.

5. Alert Hotmail support to the problem. It seems to be happening all over the place, and the more they know about it, the better it is for their efforts to address it.

I would recommend a password creation/storage utility in the future to help create stronger passwords and keep different passwords for all services so that if they get you hotmail password they can also hack your bank account.

I like lastpass.com. They have plugins for all major browsers and cell phones as well as online access to stored passwords which are all stored online in an encrypted password vault which can't even be accessed by lastpass employees since all of the encryption and decryption happen on your computer.